their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence. But the long
hostility of the mitre and the crown increased the numbers, and inflamed
the passions, of their enemies. The deadly factions of the Guelphs and
Ghibelines, so fatal to Italy, could never be embraced with truth or
constancy by the Romans, the subjects and adversaries both of the bishop
and emperor; but their support was solicited by both parties, and they
alternately displayed in their banners the keys of St. Peter and the
German eagle. Gregory the Seventh, who may be adored or detested as the
founder of the papal monarchy, was driven from Rome, and died in exile
at Salerno. Six-and-thirty of his successors, [12] till their retreat to
Avignon, maintained an unequal contest with the Romans: their age and
dignity were often violated; and the churches, in the solemn rites of
religion, were polluted with sedition and murder. A repetition [13]
of such capricious brutality, without connection or design, would be
tedious and disgusting; and I shall content myself with some events
of the twelfth century, which represent the state of the popes and the
city. On Holy Thursday, while Paschal officiated before the altar,
he was interrupted by the clamors of the multitude, who imperiously
demanded the confirmation of a favorite magistrate. His silence
exasperated their fury; his pious refusal to mingle the affairs of earth
and heaven was encountered with menaces, and oaths, that he should be
the cause and the witness of the public ruin. During the festival of
Easter, while the bishop and the clergy, barefooted and in procession,
visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted, at the
bridge of St. Angelo, and before the Capitol, with volleys of stones
and darts. The houses of his adherents were levelled with the ground:
Paschal escaped with difficulty and danger; he levied an army in the
patrimony of St. Peter; and his last days were embittered by suffering
and inflicting the calamities of civil war. The scenes that followed the
election of his successor Gelasius the Second were still more scandalous
to the church and city. Cencio Frangipani, [14] a potent and factious
baron, burst into the assembly furious and in arms: the cardinals were
stripped, beaten, and trampled under foot; and he seized, without pity
or respect, the vicar of Christ by the throat. Gelasius was dragged by
the hair along the ground, buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs,
and bound with an iron chain in the house of his brutal tyrant. An
insurrection of the people delivered their bishop: the rival families
opposed the violence of the Frangipani; and Cencio, who sued for pardon,
repented of the failure, rather than of the guilt, of his enterprise.
Not many days had elapsed, when the pope was again assaulted at the
altar. While his friends and enemies were engaged in a bloody contest,
he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight, which
excited the compassion of the Roman matrons, his attendants were
scattered or unhorsed; and, in the fields behind the church of St.
Peter, his successor was found alone and half dead with fear and
fatigue. Shaking the dust from his feet, the _apostle_ withdrew from a
city in which his dignity was insulted and his person was endangered;
and the vanity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the involuntary
confession, that one emperor was more tolerable than twenty. [15] These
examples might suffice; but I cannot forget the sufferings of two
pontiffs of the same age, the second and third of the name of Lucius.
The former, as he ascended in battle array to assault the Capitol, was
struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days. The
latter was severely wounded in the person of his servants. In a civil
commotion, several of his priests had been made prisoners; and the
inhuman Romans, reserving one as a guide for his brethren, put out their
eyes, crowned them with ludicrous mitres, mounted them on asses with
their faces towards the tail, and extorted an oath, that, in this
wretched condition, they should offer themselves as a lesson to the head
of the church. Hope or fear, lassitude or remorse, the characters of
the men, and the circumstances of the times, might sometimes obtain an
interval of peace and obedience; and the pope was restored with joyful
acclamations to the Lateran or Vatican, from whence he had been driven
with threats and violence. But the root of mischief was deep and
perennial; and a momentary calm was preceded and followed by such
tempests as had almost sunk the bark of St. Peter. Rome continually
presented the aspect of war and discord: the churches and palaces were
fortified and assaulted by the factions and families; and, after giving
peace to Europe, Calistus the Second alone had resolution and power to
prohibit the use of private arms in the metropolis. Among the nations
who revered the apostolic throne, the tumults of Rome provoked a general
indignation; and in a letter to his disciple Eugenius the Third, St.
Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit and zeal, has stigmatized the
vices of the rebellious people. [16] "Who is ignorant," says the monk of
Clairvaux, "of the vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed
in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too
feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, they aspire to reign; if
they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they
vent their discontent in loud clamors, if your doors, or your counsels,
are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, they have never learned
the science of doing good. Odious to earth and heaven, impious to God,
seditious among themselves, jealous of their neighbors, inhuman to
strangers, they love no one, by no one are they beloved; and while they
wish to inspire fear, they live in base and continual apprehension.
They will not submit; they know not how to govern faithless to their
superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to their benefactors,
and alike impudent in their demands and their refusals. Lofty in
promise, poor in execution; adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason,
are the familiar arts of their policy." Surely this dark portrait is
not colored by the pencil of Christian charity; [17] yet the features,
however harsh or ugly, express a lively resemblance of the Roman of the
twelfth century. [18]
[Footnote 12: From Leo IX. and Gregory VII. an authentic and
contemporary series of the lives of the popes by the cardinal of
Arragon, Pandulphus Pisanus, Bernard Guido, &c., is inserted in the
Italian Historians of Muratori, (tom. iii. P. i. p. 277--685,) and has
been always before my eyes.]
[Footnote 13: The dates of years in the contents may throughout his this
chapter be understood as tacit references to the Annals of Muratori,
my ordinary and excellent guide. He uses, and indeed quotes, with the
freedom of a master, his great collection of the Italian Historians, in
xxviii. volumes; and as that treasure is in my library, I have thought
it an amusement, if not a duty, to consult the originals.]
[Footnote 14: I cannot refrain from transcribing the high-colored
words of Pandulphus Pisanus, (p. 384.) Hoc audiens inimicus pacis
atque turbator jam fatus Centius Frajapane, more draconis immanissimi
sibilans, et ab imis pectoribus trahens longa suspiria, accinctus
retro gladio sine more cucurrit, valvas ac fores confregit. Ecclesiam
furibundus introiit, inde custode remoto papam per gulam accepit,
distraxit pugnis calcibusque percussit, et tanquam brutum animal intra
limen ecclesiÊ acriter calcaribus cruentavit; et latro tantum dominum
per capillos et brachia, Jes˚ bono interim dormiente, detraxit, ad domum
usque deduxit, inibi catenavit et inclusit.]
[Footnote 15: Ego coram Deo et Ecclesi‚ dico, si unquam possibile esset,
mallem unum imperatorem quam tot dominos, (Vit. Gelas. II. p. 398.)]
[Footnote 16: Quid tam notum seculis quam protervia et cervicositas
Romanorum? Gens insueta paci, tumultui assueta, gens immitis et
intractabilis usque adhuc, subdi nescia, nisi cum non valet resistere,
(de Considerat. l. iv. c. 2, p. 441.) The saint takes breath, and then
begins again: Hi, invisi terrÊ et clo, utrique injecere manus, &c., (p.
443.)]
[Footnote 17: As a Roman citizen, Petrarch takes leave to observe,
that Bernard, though a saint, was a man; that he might be provoked by
resentment, and possibly repent of his hasty passion, &c. (MÈmoires sur
la Vie de PÈtrarque, tom. i. p. 330.)]
[Footnote 18: Baronius, in his index to the xiith volume of his
Annals, has found a fair and easy excuse. He makes two heads, of Romani
_Catholici_ and _Schismatici_: to the former he applies all the good, to
the latter all the evil, that is told of the city.]
The Jews had rejected the Christ when he appeared among them in a
plebeian character; and the Romans might plead their ignorance of his
vicar when he assumed the pomp and pride of a temporal sovereign. In
the busy age of the crusades, some sparks of curiosity and reason were
rekindled in the Western world: the heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician
sect, was successfully transplanted into the soil of Italy and France;
the Gnostic visions were mingled with the simplicity of the gospel;
and the enemies of the clergy reconciled their passions with their
conscience, the desire of freedom with the profession of piety. [19] The
trumpet of Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold of Brescia, [20]
whose promotion in the church was confined to the lowest rank, and who
wore the monastic habit rather as a garb of poverty than as a uniform
of obedience. His adversaries could not deny the wit and eloquence which
they severely felt; they confess with reluctance the specious purity of
his morals; and his errors were recommended to the public by a mixture
of important and beneficial truths. In his theological studies, he had
been the disciple of the famous and unfortunate Abelard, [21] who was
likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa
was of a soft and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were
edified and disarmed by the humility of his repentance. From this
master, Arnold most probably imbibed some metaphysical definitions of
the Trinity, repugnant to the taste of the times: his ideas of baptism
and the eucharist are loosely censured; but a political heresy was the
source of his fame and misfortunes. He presumed to quote the declaration
of Christ, that his kingdom is not of this world: he boldly maintained,
that the sword and the sceptre were intrusted to the civil magistrate;
that temporal honors and possessions were lawfully vested in secular
persons; that the abbots, the bishops, and the pope himself, must
renounce either their state or their salvation; and that after the loss
of their revenues, the voluntary tithes and oblations of the faithful
would suffice, not indeed for luxury and avarice, but for a frugal life
in the exercise of spiritual labors. During a short time, the preacher
was revered as a patriot; and the discontent, or revolt, of Brescia
against her bishop, was the first fruits of his dangerous lessons. But
the favor of the people is less permanent than the resentment of the
priest; and after the heresy of Arnold had been condemned by Innocent
the Second, [22] in the general council of the Lateran, the magistrates
themselves were urged by prejudice and fear to execute the sentence of
the church. Italy could no longer afford a refuge; and the disciple of
Abelard escaped beyond the Alps, till he found a safe and hospitable
shelter in Zurich, now the first of the Swiss cantons. From a Roman
station, [23] a royal villa, a chapter of noble virgins, Zurich had
gradually increased to a free and flourishing city; where the appeals of
the Milanese were sometimes tried by the Imperial commissaries. [24] In
an age less ripe for reformation, the precursor of Zuinglius was heard
with applause: a brave and simple people imbibed, and long retained,
the color of his opinions; and his art, or merit, seduced the bishop
of Constance, and even the pope's legate, who forgot, for his sake, the
interest of their master and their order. Their tardy zeal was quickened
by the fierce exhortations of St. Bernard; [25] and the enemy of the
church was driven by persecution to the desperate measures of erecting
his standard in Rome itself, in the face of the successor of St. Peter.
[Footnote 19: The heresies of the xiith century may be found in Mosheim,
(Institut. Hist. EcclÈs. p. 419--427,) who entertains a favorable
opinion of Arnold of Brescia. In the vth volume I have described the
sect of the Paulicians, and followed their migration from Armenia to
Thrace and Bulgaria, Italy and France.]
[Footnote 20: The original pictures of Arnold of Brescia are drawn by
Otho, bishop of Frisingen, (Chron. l. vii. c. 31, de Gestis Frederici
I. l. i. c. 27, l. ii. c. 21,) and in the iiid book of the Ligurinus,
a poem of Gunthur, who flourished A.D. 1200, in the monastery of Paris
near Basil, (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. Med. et InfimÊ ∆tatis, tom. iii.
p. 174, 175.) The long passage that relates to Arnold is produced by
Guilliman, (de Rebus Helveticis, l. iii. c. 5, p. 108.) *
Note: Compare Franke, Arnold von Brescia und seine Zeit. Zurich,
1828.--M.]
[Footnote 21: The wicked wit of Bayle was amused in composing, with much
levity and learning, the articles of Abelard, Foulkes, Heloise, in
his Dictionnaire Critique. The dispute of Abelard and St. Bernard,
of scholastic and positive divinity, is well understood by Mosheim,
(Institut. Hist. EcclÈs. p. 412--415.)]
[Footnote 22:
----Damnatus ab illo
PrÊsule, qui numeros vetitum contingere nostros
Nomen ad _innocu‚_ ducit laudabile vit‚.
We may applaud the dexterity and correctness of Ligurinus, who turns the
unpoetical name of Innocent II. into a compliment.]
[Footnote 23: A Roman inscription of Statio Turicensis has been found at
Zurich, (D'Anville, Notice de l'ancienne Gaul, p. 642--644;) but it is
without sufficient warrant, that the city and canton have usurped, and
even monopolized, the names of Tigurum and Pagus Tigurinus.]
[Footnote 24: Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, l. iii. c. 5, p. 106)
recapitulates the donation (A.D. 833) of the emperor Lewis the Pious to
his daughter the abbess Hildegardis. Curtim nostram Turegum in ducat˚
AlamanniÊ in pago Durgaugensi, with villages, woods, meadows, waters,
slaves, churches, &c.; a noble gift. Charles the Bald gave the jus
monetÊ, the city was walled under Otho I., and the line of the bishop of
Frisingen,
Nobile Turegum multarum copia rerum,
is repeated with pleasure by the antiquaries of Zurich.]
[Footnote 25: Bernard, Epistol. cxcv. tom. i. p. 187--190. Amidst his
invectives he drops a precious acknowledgment, qui, utinam quam sanÊ
esset doctrinÊ quam districtÊ est vitÊ. He owns that Arnold would be a
valuable acquisition for the church.]
Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.--Part II.
Yet the courage of Arnold was not devoid of discretion: he was
protected, and had perhaps been invited, by the nobles and people; and
in the service of freedom, his eloquence thundered over the seven hills.
Blending in the same discourse the texts of Livy and St. Paul, uniting
the motives of gospel, and of classic, enthusiasm, he admonished the
Romans, how strangely their patience and the vices of the clergy had
degenerated from the primitive times of the church and the city. He
exhorted them to assert the inalienable rights of men and Christians; to
restore the laws and magistrates of the republic; to respect the
_name_ of the emperor; but to confine their shepherd to the spiritual
government of his flock. [26] Nor could his spiritual government escape
the censure and control of the reformer; and the inferior clergy
were taught by his lessons to resist the cardinals, who had usurped a
despotic command over the twenty-eight regions or parishes of Rome. [27]
The revolution was not accomplished without rapine and violence, the
diffusion of blood and the demolition of houses: the victorious faction
was enriched with the spoils of the clergy and the adverse nobles.
Arnold of Brescia enjoyed, or deplored, the effects of his mission: his
reign continued above ten years, while two popes, Innocent the Second
and Anastasius the Fourth, either trembled in the Vatican, or wandered
as exiles in the adjacent cities. They were succeeded by a more vigorous
and fortunate pontiff. Adrian the Fourth, [28] the only Englishman who
has ascended the throne of St. Peter; and whose merit emerged from the
mean condition of a monk, and almost a beggar, in the monastery of St.
Albans. On the first provocation, of a cardinal killed or wounded in the
streets, he cast an interdict on the guilty people; and from Christmas
to Easter, Rome was deprived of the real or imaginary comforts of
religious worship. The Romans had despised their temporal prince: they
submitted with grief and terror to the censures of their spiritual
father: their guilt was expiated by penance, and the banishment of the
seditious preacher was the price of their absolution. But the revenge of
Adrian was yet unsatisfied, and the approaching coronation of Frederic
Barbarossa was fatal to the bold reformer, who had offended, though
not in an equal degree, the heads of the church and state. In their
interview at Viterbo, the pope represented to the emperor the furious,
ungovernable spirit of the Romans; the insults, the injuries, the fears,
to which his person and his clergy were continually exposed; and the
pernicious tendency of the heresy of Arnold, which must subvert the
principles of civil, as well as ecclesiastical, subordination. Frederic
was convinced by these arguments, or tempted by the desire of the
Imperial crown: in the balance of ambition, the innocence or life of an
individual is of small account; and their common enemy was sacrificed to
a moment of political concord. After his retreat from Rome, Arnold had
been protected by the viscounts of Campania, from whom he was extorted
by the power of CÊsar: the prÊfect of the city pronounced his sentence:
the martyr of freedom was burned alive in the presence of a careless
and ungrateful people; and his ashes were cast into the Tyber, lest the
heretics should collect and worship the relics of their master. [29] The
clergy triumphed in his death: with his ashes, his sect was dispersed;
his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans. From his school they
had probably derived a new article of faith, that the metropolis of
the Catholic church is exempt from the penalties of excommunication and
interdict. Their bishops might argue, that the supreme jurisdiction,
which they exercised over kings and nations, more especially embraced
the city and diocese of the prince of the apostles. But they preached to
the winds, and the same principle that weakened the effect, must temper
the abuse, of the thunders of the Vatican.
[Footnote 26: He advised the Romans,
Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa
Arbitrio tractare suo: nil juris in h‚c re
Pontifici summo, modicum concedere regi
Suadebat populo. Sic lÊs‚ stultus utr‚que
Majestate, reum geminÊ se fecerat aulÊ.
Nor is the poetry of Gunther different from the prose of Otho.]
[Footnote 27: See Baronius (A.D. 1148, No. 38, 39) from the Vatican
MSS. He loudly condemns Arnold (A.D. 1141, No. 3) as the father of the
political heretics, whose influence then hurt him in France.]
[Footnote 28: The English reader may consult the Biographia Britannica,
Adrian IV.; but our own writers have added nothing to the fame or merits
of their countrymen.]
[Footnote 29: Besides the historian and poet already quoted, the
last adventures of Arnold are related by the biographer of Adrian IV.
(Muratori. Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 441, 442.)]
The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief that as early as
the tenth century, in their first struggles against the Saxon Othos,
the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by the senate and people of
Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among the nobles, and that
ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived the name and office of the
tribunes of the commons. [30] But this venerable structure disappears
before the light of criticism. In the darkness of the middle ages,
the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of consuls, may
sometimes be discovered. [31] They were bestowed by the emperors, or
assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their
honors, [32] and perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician descent: but
they float on the surface, without a series or a substance, the titles
of men, not the orders of government; [33] and it is only from the year
of Christ one thousand one hundred and forty-four that the establishment
of the senate is dated, as a glorious Êra, in the acts of the city.
A new constitution was hastily framed by private ambition or popular
enthusiasm; nor could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an antiquary
to explain, or a legislator to restore, the harmony and proportions of
the ancient model. The assembly of a free, of an armed, people,
will ever speak in loud and weighty acclamations. But the regular
distribution of the thirty-five tribes, the nice balance of the wealth
and numbers of the centuries, the debates of the adverse orators, and
the slow operations of votes and ballots, could not easily be adapted by
a blind multitude, ignorant of the arts, and insensible of the
benefits, of legal government. It was proposed by Arnold to revive
and discriminate the equestrian order; but what could be the motive
or measure of such distinction? [34] The pecuniary qualification of the
knights must have been reduced to the poverty of the times: those times
no longer required their civil functions of judges and farmers of the
revenue; and their primitive duty, their military service on horseback,
was more nobly supplied by feudal tenures and the spirit of chivalry.
The jurisprudence of the republic was useless and unknown: the nations
and families of Italy who lived under the Roman and Barbaric laws were
insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some faint tradition, some
imperfect fragments, preserved the memory of the Code and Pandects of
Justinian. With their liberty the Romans might doubtless have restored
the appellation and office of consuls; had they not disdained a title so
promiscuously adopted in the Italian cities, that it has finally settled
on the humble station of the agents of commerce in a foreign land. But
the rights of the tribunes, the formidable word that arrested the
public counsels, suppose or must produce a legitimate democracy. The
old patricians were the subjects, the modern barons the tyrants, of the
state; nor would the enemies of peace and order, who insulted the
vicar of Christ, have long respected the unarmed sanctity of a plebeian
magistrate. [35]
[Footnote 30: Ducange (Gloss. Latinitatis MediÊ et InfimÊ ∆tatis,
Decarchones, tom. ii. p. 726) gives me a quotation from Blondus, (Decad.
ii. l. ii.:) Duo consules ex nobilitate quotannis fiebant, qui ad
vetustum consulum exemplar summÊrerum prÊessent. And in Sigonius (de
Regno ItaliÊ, l. v. Opp. tom. ii. p. 400) I read of the consuls and
tribunes of the xth century. Both Blondus, and even Sigonius, too
freely copied the classic method of supplying from reason or fancy the
deficiency of records.]
[Footnote 31: In the panegyric of Berengarius (Muratori, Script. Rer.
Ital. tom. ii. P. i. p. 408) a Roman is mentioned as consulis natus in
the beginning of the xth century. Muratori (Dissert. v.) discovers, in
the years 952 and 956, Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius
consul et dux; and in 1015, Romanus, brother of Gregory VIII., proudly,
but vaguely, styles himself consul et dux et omnium Roma norum senator.]
[Footnote 32: As late as the xth century, the Greek emperors conferred
on the dukes of Venice, Naples, Amalphi, &c., the title of upatoV
or consuls, (see Chron. Sagornini, passim;) and the successors of
Charlemagne would not abdicate any of their prerogative. But in general
the names of _consul_ and _senator_, which may be found among the French
and Germans, signify no more than count and lord, (_Signeur_, Ducange
Glossar.) The monkish writers are often ambitious of fine classic
words.]
[Footnote 33: The most constitutional form is a diploma of Otho III.,
(A. D 998,) consulibus senat˚s populique Romani; but the act is probably
spurious. At the coronation of Henry I., A.D. 1014, the historian
Dithmar (apud Muratori, Dissert. xxiii.) describes him, a senatoribus
duodecim vallatum, quorum sex rasi barb‚, alii prolix‚, mystice
incedebant cum baculis. The senate is mentioned in the panegyric of
Berengarius, (p. 406.)]
[Footnote 34: In ancient Rome the equestrian order was not ranked
with the senate and people as a third branch of the republic till the
consulship of Cicero, who assumes the merit of the establishment,
(Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 3. Beaufort, RÈpublique Romaine, tom. i. p.
144--155.)]
[Footnote 35: The republican plan of Arnold of Brescia is thus stated by
Gunther:--
Quin etiam titulos urbis renovare vetustos;
Nomine plebeio secernere nomen equestre,
Jura tribunorum, sanctum reparare senatum,
Et senio fessas mutasque reponere leges.
Lapsa ruinosis, et adhuc pendentia muris
Reddere primÊvo Capitolia prisca nitori.
But of these reformations, some were no more than ideas, others no more
than words.]